Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks. | Hacker News Reader

Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.

vanityfair.com

157 pointssurlyadopter86 comments

Fantastic article. I can only wonder how the Greek government will move forward.

Something the article doesn't mention (or that I didn't see when I skimmed it):

The value of the entire Greek church is in the billions of euros, and nothing is taxed. The government asked them to be taxed a while ago, and the church said that, if they were taxed, they would have to stop charity work because they didn't have enough money. Meanwhile, the high priests wear 30k euro hats and ride around in limousines.

On the other hand, if they did get taxed, a good chunk of it would end up in the pockets of politicians and big companies, as usual. The whole situation isn't very encouraging for citizens who pay taxes...

EDIT: This article [1] mentions that the church put the value of its property at 700m euros. External parties place it at 2-15b euros, while at some point, years ago, 5 monasteries said that they evaluated the value of their properties at around 20b of today's euros (this is just for 5 monasteries). You can imagine how taxing the church would pay off a good chunk of the debt, but, in Greece, you don't get taxed when you have this much money.

[1]: http://dialogoi.enet.gr/post/νάνος-ή-γίγαντας-η-εκκλησιαστικ...

>5 monasteries said that they evaluated the value of their properties at around 20b of today's euros (this is just for 5 monasteries). You can imagine how taxing the church would pay off a good chunk of the debt

So are you proposing that they instigate a one-off property tax on everyone in Greece or just on the monasteries. The reason that 5 monasteries have so much valuable land is not necessarily that they are rich (the meals described in the article and lifestyle aren't exactly lavish either) but because they own large areas of land which when they adopted them 100s of years ago were probably unwanted, but now (speculating) are probably places where holiday resorts would be built.

Demanding a piece of a valuation of the properties would I imagine mean many such properties would be sold off and a great swathe of Greek heritage from the last millenium or so would then be following all the unpaid taxes and disappearing.

Perhaps you could explain further how you propose to get cash out of monastic property?

The "value" of the monasteries also seems like it requires assumptions about what would be permitted. I imagine Mount Athos, for example, could be quite valuable as a tourist and resort destination--- could make some nice boutique hotels out of those historic monasteries. But since secular development has been banned on the peninsula for centuries, I can't imagine that actually happening. If we assume that Mouth Athos will stay off-limits to secular development, and assume that the removal/sale of historic items from the monasteries wouldn't be permitted, the value of their land and holdings (e.g. manuscripts) is much lower, because it isn't commercially exploitable.

Now shell companies owned by the church engaged in normal for-profit business, those seem pretty reasonable to tax.

> nice boutique hotels out of those historic monasteries

Are you kidding ? That's incredibly rude. How would you feel is someone proposed commercializing in the same way that you hold most dear ? I think this is just ignorance and you in no way realize the cultural, historical, and yes, mystical significance of those places.

He's ignorant? Finish reading the paragraph!

That's not what I said. I said they should tax the church's income.

To be fair, you were using the net worth of the church as a supporting argument for taxing its income, and the reply pointed out that much of their net worth is extraordinarly illiquid and uncorrelated with their income.

Limos and $30K hats certainly don't sound like priceless historic artifacts, though.

It was actually a poor segue, I meant for the two points to be unrelated, I googled a bit and found the link to the article and thought I'd posted it, as it shows that the church's argument that they're poor is false. I should have better clarified the wording, really...

Bear in mind that they rent much of the property to others and generate quite a bit of income that way. It's not just monasteries, they own whole blocks of buildings in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities (I have no citation for that, sadly).

>Meanwhile, the high priests wear 30k euro hats and ride around in limousines.

Remember this next time you see some big executive talking about how he needs tax cuts because he can't afford to hire employees. In other words, no matter how much someone makes, it never occurs to them that if they would make their insane excess a little less they could afford it.

I worked in investment banking for 5 years and I never saw anyone wearing a EUR 30k hat!

Hell, Brioni or Kiton suits only come in at EUR 20k...

Have you never heard an executive complain about workers being expensive while being compensated several million per year?

If you're enough of a bigshot in a company large enough to pay you that kind of money, then yes, workers are expensive. Hundreds of workers are pricier than one executive.

Really? 300 workers making $30k/year is less than $10 million.

Well, the workers are being paid less than $10 million. But if they receive any sort of benefits then their cost to the employer goes up quite a bit. And you also have to factor in payroll taxes. The cost of a worker is not just his/her salary.

True. And that goes for the executives as well, more so in fact (e.g. better health care plans and so on).

> The value of the entire Greek church is in the billions of euros, and nothing is taxed.

You know that NGOs are also not taxed?

I personally find a lot of people who are against religion who wants churches taxed. The only reason is that they have an axe to grind.

Churches (and NGOs) are by definition not wealth creators. A church elder praying or a nun giving food to the poor does not create wealth (but fulfills a whole different social function).

“The second day on the job I had to call a meeting to look at the budget,” he says. “I gathered everyone from the general accounting office, and we started this, like, discovery process.” Each day they discovered some incredible omission.

Last week there was a post about a woman that was $185K in debt and didn't know it. There were a lot of comments asking how that could happen. Here's an example of a whole country that didn't know how much it owed.

"There’s no question that the government is resolved to at least try to re-create Greek civic life. The only question is: Can such a thing, once lost, ever be re-created?"

I reccomend reading Machiavelli's Discourses to anyone interested in the particular subject. He has put much study into this question.

To provide short answer - Niccolo believes that once the "civic virtue" of the state (and thus its citizens) gets corrupted it certainly is possible to restore it - but that he sadly cannot think of a single person that would be capable of pulling it of (it is such a monumental undertaking, requiring an honest person to commit some amoral actions - without succumbing to corruption of power).

Thus a more probable course of action according to Machiavelli is - that such a state (or nation) is condemned to "eternal" turomoil and/or domination from an other (more virtous) power.

Nice that we can still rely on Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and (sometimes) the Atlantic for journalism this thorough.

Greece seems insane, of course - but there's always Italy.

Why the qualifier for the Atlantic? I find it tends to have more journalism than VF and New Yorker, which have more cultural content. In particular, the New Yorker will typically have one good piece of journalism per issue, where the Atlantic will have multiple.

Good point, I'm not sure what I was thinking. The Atlantic is generally excellent, too, I guess I'm just not as familiar with them.

The question is: do you convert that sentiment to subscribing?

I ask because the only way good journalism venues can survive in the short to medium term is through print subscriptions, which subsidize their websites.

(For those of you about to level the charge of hypocrisy: I get the New Yorker and the Atlantic. Reading the latter starting when I was a college freshmen has probably taught nearly as much as all my non-technical classes combined.)

It's a nice sentiment, but expecting people to subscribe to your print magazine because they like reading your articles online is a recipe for a broken business model. People like good journalism and they're willing to support it, but such support needs to be requested in a logical manner. When non-profits request donations, that makes sense. When for-profit print publications ask for subscriptions, people are disinclined to follow through because they don't actually want what they're presumably paying for.

I subscribed to The Atlantic today because of the quality of this (Vanity Fair) article. Why? It reminded me of how good some of the articles from The Atlantic website were.

It's a nice sentiment, but expecting people to subscribe to your print magazine because they like reading your articles online is a recipe for a broken business model.

Maybe so. But if you, as an individual, like the high-quality journalism that's being produced, the question is not whether the magazine has an optimal business model but whether you want to keep reading the high-quality journalism. The optimal way to signal that you do is to subscribe.

When for-profit print publications ask for subscriptions, people are disinclined to follow through because they don't actually want what they're presumably paying for.

I think I'm paying for high-quality journalism, unbiased stories, and deep reporting. It happens to be delivered in a convenient package of pages bound with a stable and mailed. What do you think you (or others) are paying for?

> The optimal way to signal that you do is to subscribe.

Agreed.

> I think I'm paying for high-quality journalism, unbiased stories, and deep reporting. It happens to be delivered in a convenient package of pages bound with a stable and mailed. What do you think you (or others) are paying for?

You're not paying for that. Anyone can get that for free. You're donating your money to them so they can continue to do their work. You don't actually want what they're selling, you just want them to continue producing the stuff that they give away to everyone. Sounds like a non-profit to me.

High-quality journalism isn't in much trouble. People are willing to pay for it (and my job security relies on that fact), but most publications are using a psychologically suboptimal way to get that money. If they explicitly said, "Donate money to us or buy a subscription so we can keep producing great journalism", they'd probably be more successful.

I believe many magazines make most of their money off of advertising, not subscriptions. In fact many magazines will subsidize their subscription prices in order to increase readership so that they can raise the price for advertisements.

The article points out many of the problems of the greek economy, like:

* The inflated public sector

* The power of the unions over the government

* The corruption in certain areas of the public sector (e.g. hospitals)

* The loose observance of laws

But it mischaracterizes several important points, as it is commons with articles that describe such complicated issues after a minimal exposure of the journalist to the situation:

* Tax evasion does not hurt the real economy. Especially not in a country like Greece where the public sector is so inefficient. It might be unfair for some but it doesn't really hurt the economy. In some cases it enables smart and motivated entrepreneurs to start their businesses.

* Most public sector workers are not corrupted but they are part of the problem simply because of the fact that they work in the public sector. Think of DMV x1000.

* The majority of Greeks are against the unions and would like to see the public sector shrink.

Tax evasion hurts when a government owes tons of money that it cannot pay back with the current tax revenue coming in.

But this is not the cause of the economic problems. The more appropriate solution would be to shut down the money-loosing public businesses (like the train org) and lay off as many people as needed from the public sector.

This way, they will reduce government spending and will also allow people to do something more productive.

More taxation will just slow down the economy even further.

Greece has a debt crisis. The state borrowed some €216 billion and now cannot pay it. This isn't just some slow down caused by the business cycle that can be fixed by reducing taxes.

Tax evasion costs the Greek government an estimated $20B a year. I would say that improving tax collection would significantly help Greece make payments on their debt. You have a big problem when there are millionaire doctors not paying a cent in taxes to the state.

Sure, they have money wasting state enterprises, they could try to privatize some of them - but it is something that should not be done in a hasty manner. Rushes to privatize have led to massive failures (see Russia, parts of Latin America).

So in order to get out of this mess they should 1. Restructure the debt to get a longer payment schedule 2. Improve their ability to collect taxes so that they can make some of those payments. 3. Work to privatize certain state owned businesses / infrastructure.

... or drop out of the EU, devalue currency, grow GDP

You are arguing as if the Greek government is entitled at peoples' money no questions asked.

What you are suggesting is to keep wasting the tax money to pay for the inflated public sector and all the money wasting state companies.

They should first fix the problem, stop the wasting, and then try to collect more taxes.

Reducing tax evasion, without solving the root cause, will help nobody, it will just get more money wasted.

As far as your last point goes, I am not totally against dept restructuring. As long as they make sure they solve the root case of the problem

And you are arguing as if the Greek government is entitled to no taxes.

Greece provides its citizens with loads of social services. Someone/something has to pay for that. In the other EU countries, you know - the ones without sovereign debt crises (Germany for example), the taxes paid by citizens help pay for some of those services.

In Greece that doesn't happen because of the rampant tax evasion. So instead the government lies about its budget deficit, borrows tons of debt, and is now hoping for a bailout from some of the more fiscally responsible EU nations. German tax paying citizens are likely going to have to help subsidize Greek citizens who are unwilling to pay taxes.

Greece does not provide its citizens with more social services than other European countries, I would say that they actually provide less. And although you are right about the deficit, again, the main problem is the inflated public sector with all its associated problems, like high pensions at a young age.

The private sector should not be burdened with this, and actually, it cannot afford to pay for this burden. If collecting more taxes is the solution here, it's certain that Greece will go bankrupt.

Regarding Germany vs the other European countries, what is easy to see is the direct contribution of Germany to the EU but the indirect benefits that Germany got because of the fixed currency are more difficult to see although very very important for them.

It's not about more taxes, necessarily, it's that everyone should pay their "fair share", not some people pay 50%, and some wealthier people pay 0. If they think that is too high, they need to convince the politicians/electorate to lower the taxes. I can't just go steal stuff from the supermarket because I don't like the price.

"It's not about more taxes, necessarily, it's that everyone should pay their "fair share", not some people pay 50%"

I wish this was the case in the US.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-a...

Nearly 50% of US households didn't pay federal taxes last year. It seems people only complain when the "rich" don't pay their taxes.

I also seriously doubt that the only people not paying taxes in Greece are wealthy.

But people in the US (mostly) pay the taxes that they are supposed to pay, not the taxes they feel like paying. If they don't like that, there is a democratic process they can go through to get them lowered (or raised, or whatever).

> I also seriously doubt that the only people not paying taxes in Greece are wealthy.

If you read the article and the comments, the people who actually pay their taxes are those who work for companies and have them withheld, so pretty much "middle class".

> It seems people only complain when the "rich" don't pay their taxes.

I wonder why ... I'd be pretty bitter if I had to pay, and saw some guy living a life of luxury who isn't paying a dime.

There's a difference between being against taxes, and fighting to eliminate them, and simply cheating because you don't like them.

If they are going to be good citizens, then Greeks must not only pay their taxes, they must also take responsibility for fixing their government, reducing waste, and stamping out their culture of corruption.

I don't think I disagree with you. My whole argument in these posts is that tax evasion, although very real, did not lead Greece to this mess neither will its reverse take it out. The problem is the bloated public sector with all its related problems. I think fixing that should be the first step towards a real solution.

That's obviously a large part of the problem - to claim otherwise would be silly. But the overarching theme of the article is how everyone is out to "get theirs" and screw the next guy. This includes both the unions who got wages and benefits far out of proportion to the value of their work, as well as many people cheating on their taxes. It's a vicious circle, because when you see the next guy cheating and coming out ahead because of it, you are more inclined to cheat yourself, or grab what you can, the consequences for society be damned.

I think this has a perverse effect on markets in general: when you're pretty sure the next guy is out to screw you, rather than just make a fair trade, it erodes faith in markets and capitalism.

Really? Shut down public transportation, public health care, public telecommunications and public power? Do you have an equally brief transition plan?

Traditionally one then invades Poland - but this may not be an option for Greece.

I am not advocating something that extreme here. Not sure how familiar you are with Greece. Each of these organizations is overstaffed to a great extend. Then some of them are totally useless, like the public railroad. On the top of that there are businesses that would be very healthy in the private sector (see banks) and that the government has absolutely no reason to be in. The fact that the government is actually in those businesses, profitable or not, screws up the incentives of everyone involved.

I happen to be somewhat familiar, since I've been living there for 26 years. The majority of state enterprises (or those the state has a share in) right now are profitable, with the notable exceptions of a) railroads and b) the off-the-books units created by ministries to handle short-term tasks. Could they benefit from a restructuring and would lay offs be helpful? Probably so.

Does the state's involvement in public corporation screw up incentives? Telecommunications is a good example of why not. Banks still don't convince me; they pay taxes with interest rates significantly less than 18-20%, which is the norm and they have resisted any and all attempts of the state for policy changes.

Personally, I am more concerned with other issues: the legislation that often proves to be shortsighted and inefficient, limited (and that's a euphemism) opportunities to young entrepreneurs, poor education, but the one thing that bugs me the most is that Greeks (yeah, I'm one of them) have no regard for public interest. The why is a longer story than what can fit in this post.

PS. You hinted to "shut down the money-loosing public businesses" as the "more appropriate solution"; if you're not advocating for it I may have to brush up on my English comprehension skills.

A point with which I strongly disagree is that some public businesses are profitable so we should leave them alone. First of all, it's trivial to be profitable if you control a monopoly. Also, being profitable doesn't mean you are efficient, some things could be done much more effectively in the private sector. Also, by being overstaffed, even if profitable, you are not allowing all these people working for you to do something more productive.

Beyond that, when talking about profitability, you should consider pension plans and future obligations. Some of these businesses might have a positive balance sheet for the year but what's going to happen if you consider their future, inflated, obligations. A good example are the pensions the Public Electric Company employees get. They are mostly funded by the government.

Let's see why it screws up incentives: -- What do you think any of the people working in the public sector tries to optimize? Is it the successe of the business they are working on? Do they try to advance their careers? Or do they try to work as little as possible? -- If an employee is not good, is a government controlled company ever going to fire them? -- The guy who controls the supplies in the hospitals, does he ever have to report to somebody about that? -- Do you know a single person in the public sector that he has ever been promoted or fired because of his skills or lack there of?

A point with which I strongly disagree is that some public businesses are profitable so we should leave them alone.

A point which I didn't make. Improvements can always take place. But no matter; not all businesses I was talking about are monopolies. In fact, the telecom sector is free since 2001, and it's doing great, considering HTO possessed 100% of the infrastructure up to that point.

Incentives are given by management. It is extremely easy for any business to motivate their employers, as it is easy to lay off slackers. It mostly does not happen; this is a result of corruption, incoherent legislation, and poor law enforcement as well as financial and management review (among others). I've already mentioned those factors, I view them as extremely dangerous for our economy and I highly doubt they'll be waived in any reasonable amount of time. I think we mostly agree on this part.

It hurts the government's creditors, as it should.

It hurts the government, but the institutions that were dumb enough to lend Greece should be also accountable. Of course if Greece defaults, German taxpayers are likely to pick up the tab so it sucks for them.

I upvoted you because you make a valid point ... what exactly, are the government services that Greeks who "should" be paying their taxes actually receiving?

One big group of tax evaders are doctors, who like to play both sides of the game. They accept large government subsidies and equipment on the one hand, and run off-the-books side businesses with that equipment on the other hand. Sometimes the side business isn't even very "side": doctors frequently demand and receive under-the-table cash payments to "expedite" service in the state hospitals.

They also, of course, didn't pay tuition for their medical degrees--- their education was paid for by the people who actually pay taxes.

"The loose observance of laws" and "tax evasion" are one and the same.

A big point I get from the article is that everyone is just looking out for themselves, with little regard for law or society. Want to pay less taxes? Fine, vote in the local version of Thatcher, but don't cheat. That leads to a system where everyone picks and chooses which laws they want to follow.

> Tax evasion does not hurt the real economy.

You sound like someone from Greece trying to justify tax evasion - are you Greek?

What is the "real economy"?

I am not advocating tax evasion. I think, US for example, is a great place to do business, as opposed to Greece, because the letter of the law is followed and the rules are clear to everyone. I am just saying that the Greek government was so inefficient and the public sector so bloated, that in some sense tax evasion was helping put people's money at more efficient uses.

More efficient such as..?

Such as building their own private businesses and employing other people in the private sector.

For example, it is much more beneficial to the country to build, say a new hotel (as this is Greece's biggest industry), instead of wasting the money on more public-railroad-type of money wasting businesses.

good points. if greeks started paying all the taxes, the private sector would cease to exist.

The problem with tax evasion in a democracy is that, when combined with a government's ability to borrow money, it removes the one of the main reasons why voters should care about how much the government spends. If you don't pay taxes, government spending is free money, at least until the debt burden becomes obviously unsustainable and things start falling apart as a result.

I read that as "Geeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Geeks" and was subsequently rather surprised when the photo of that chap came up.

haha, me too. Every time. Probably also very true, someone should blog about this.

I thought that was an excellent, well written and entertaining article. Well worth the time if you are interested.

To me the only solution is to remove themselves from the EU and go back to their own currency. And for some type of structured devaluation of their existing debts to gradually -rather than overnight- allow the other european banks to write off the losses. Though I'm not sure how you could get it to work out in practice. But the inflation rate and deficits were all a sham, I'm sure they can come up with some sort of sham valuation on untraded paper.

They thought about this. What happens is that there is no way the devaluation could become "gradual".

Imagine being Greek and having all your live savings in the bank, in euros, and tomorrow they become drachmas and in the process losing 25% purchasing power. What do you do? You sell all your drachmas and buy euros or dollars because you know drachmas are going to be even less tomorrow.

It doesn't matter you make it illegal, people is going to do it anyway. This is what happened in Argentina, nobody wanted pesos, they wanted USD. People stopped using banks(this way the government has less power over your money).

Also, people feel enormously betrayed when they realize their hard earned savings become nothing and politician heads roll down, so politicians try to delay it as much as possible. IMO it will happen sooner or later anyway, unfortunately because they were in fact betrayed.

I was thinking more of the debt rather than the currency. My point of view wasn't so much the Greeks but the european banks with exposure to Greek government debt. I was thinking along the lines of an ECB fund that assumed responsibility for the debt, froze trading in it and gradually reduced the value somehow.

But as you say, once the Euro is dumped whatever replaces it is going to be very unstable.

All in all, it's a good warning against the evils of excessive government spending and endless deficits.

A currency is "legal tender" because a government will accept taxes in it, so in practice everyone has to have it, and use it for their own commercial activity.

But in an economy where no-one pays taxes anyway...

Well that was incredibly depressing...the amount of social change (nevermind laws and enforcement and such) needed to fix Greece sounds nearly impossible.

“The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes. And they never did because no one is punished. No one has ever been punished. It’s a cavalier offense—like a gentleman not opening a door for a lady.”

The article makes it clear that for Greece to improve this type of behavior must change. But is it even possible for Greece to do this in the span of say, less than one generation?

I can't seem to find it, but I recall reading a piece at one point that suggested the general disregard for government rules in the eastern Mediterranean goes back centuries, to the rule of the Byzantines, Arabs, and Ottomans at various times. The rulers kept changing, and were generally bureaucratic, so people got used to doing whatever minimum was necessary to appease them, and generally ignore them whenever possible. Hence rampant avoidance of taxation, buildings often built in blatant violation of zoning or building codes, large informal economies, preference for dealing with officials you personally know / are related to, etc.

(IIRC, the author grouped Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt in that analysis.)

You can safely add the Balkans and Romania to that group. Although many things work well without a bribe in Romania, most important things, I'm told, do not. The first thing my parents do when they have to deal with the government is ask themselves who do we know that works in that department ? As teachers, that works great for them. TBH, they do that when dealing with private businesses too, maybe even more so, but then I realize that's just how business works.

As a Romanian, this article mostly made me feel good there are worse places. Not a noble feeling, but I'll take what I can.

This being said, this instinct about looking for acquaintances first is starting to be not so useful, and used mostly by the older generation. I've seen instances where inside intervention was less efficient - but I've also seen official free consultants (good ones) with too much free time because most people went over their. But still, it is unfortunately far from being a useless strategy in way too many cases.

Compared to how the article paints Greece though, our problems are different. Tax evasion is real here, but not critical. What _is_ extremely painful at the moment is the widespread politicization of public institutions. Everything starting from middle school headmasters has to belong to a party or another (and of course usually it's the ruling one).

Actually, wasn't this article in the top just a few days ago?

[UPD:] Here's the link to the prior submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1670824

Sounds like Italy ^ 2.

I don't think that the "money as debt" problem is specific to Greece. You know that your country, province/state, city/county is probably in similar circumstances. And the problem is not about local people not being able to trust their fellow people. The problem is usury: banks, and the financial systems that loan money where there is no money to pay back the compounded interest.

Here is the top comment on this http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/09/08/bank-rate-decision-... cbc story about the Bank Of Canada.

Watch the movie: http://ohcanadamovie.com/

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered"

Thomas Jefferson 1816

Did you know that PRIVATE Banks print 85% of our money supply in Canada and 100% of the money supply in the US ( the Federal Reserve )

1 they print money out of thin air

2 lend it to our governments with interest

3 fiat currency

4 fractional reserves ( for every $ 1 printed they can loan another $ 9 out of thin air

5 they control the money supply and devalue YOUR money in order to profit

Our monetary system is the biggest SCAM going

Banks love a DEBT ECONOMY & they love Government Deficits – the more debt the dump into the system the higher the profits they make

The Bank Of Canada (Central Bank Of Canada) used to be under the authority of the Federal Finance Minister. Ostensibly, to this day, it still is. But there is a catch that most people don't know about. From 1934 until 1974 it created currency and the issuance of credit for the PEOPLE OF CANADA The interest on these loans was put back into Canada and was used to build the Trans Canada Hwy and various infrastructure

In 1974, however, when Canada joined the G7, which became the G8, which is now the G20, it gave up it's monetary control and credit issuance to private banking cartels that run most of the western industrial nations (Germany, England, France, Switzerland, Italy etc). The Canadian National Debt has since gone from 18 billion in 1974, to now 500 billion in 2009

"Once a nation parts with the control of Its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."

William Lyon Mackenzie King 10th Prime Minister of Canada.

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."

James Madison

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning".

Henry Ford

Well written, although it reads more like an opinion piece than an objective report.

If Greece were a business, it would become bankrupt and be dissolved. I guess that realistically can't happen for an entire country - but they really need a solid reboot.

It was written by Michael Lewis, so I suspect the primary goal was for it to be an entertaining story. Which it was, I hope he's working on a book on the subject.

I agree! He's one of my favorite "light" writers on financial matters. His article about Iceland (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland2...) is a classic.

Bankruptcy can happen for a country.

Happy exporting something to Somalia and getting a Somali currency bank check as payment - No?

It's trickier to go bankrupt if your country use somebody else's money. Would you sell to Greece and accept euros you can spend in Germany - Yes ?

True; expulsion (or leave) from a monetary union will also effect the euro considerably, and those issues (mistrust, bond revaluation, etc.) can quickly evolve in an avalanche effect. No sane person in the EU wants that.

Also physically a bit tricky. You would have to announce it in advance, to allow time for the new currency to be produced - in which time everybody would hoard euros. Then everyone waits for the new currency to fall like a stone, so nobody uses it, so no tax revenue.

This is truly an excellent article. I've never read an article online of this length before where I haven't taken a break or switched tabs.

Having said that, the Vanity Fair website has a lot of fluff ("Which President Decorated the Oval Office Best?" anybody?). If they concentrated on quality articles like this one I'd subscribe in an instant.

This entire article presumes that the Greek people are responsible for the debts of the Greek government.

Well they elect the government, so yes they are.

Having the ability to cast a vote makes one responsible for all actions of whomever gets elected, plus the entire standing government?

Voting in representative democracy is statistical quality, so no, not one in particular but a nation as a whole. Like in the USA you might not be personally responsible for Iraq war, but as an American, you are.

Of course such property makes it attractive to neglect personal political responsibility. But in some situations, like with Greeks now, it can come back and bite you in the ass.

(Also, read the article - it's not quite about benign populi paying for mistakes of the Government)

To be partially responsible for something, there must be something one could have done that may have prevented it. Please tell me as an American, what I could have done that could have possibly prevented the Iraq war. I'm not asking for monumental results, but at least what would have withdrawn my alleged contribution to the war?

I did read the article, and all of its prescriptions presume that the Greek people are indebted to their government. Is it not possible that the informal economy grows, the government goes bankrupt, but the society (held together by local structures) continues on?

You could not do much I'm afraid, it's sad but it still holds you responsible as part of the group. May sound too harsh, but collective responsibility is acknowledged explicitly e.g. in post-war German ideology. Being taught that in schools might alone make people more considerate of their choices in general.

As for the article, it suggests that Greeks despise and distrust each other in first place. Not sure it's a good starting point for anarchic type of society. Also, notice how the most vocal protesters there were the government workers (who earn triple of the private sector on average).

In practice, they are, unless they can pick up and leave, taking their assets with them. (Any Greeks thinking about doing this, I suggest you do it soon.) It may not be fair, but the last paragraph of the article lays out the choices pretty well. They're all bad, and the people of Greece will feel the pain either way.

When things are going bad is not easy to change. It is easy to spend money, to borrow and to forget to pay taxes. But the other way round is another story, one to be written and not a gay one.

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